


the spear that pierced patroclus

by extemporaneous



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Bisexual Dean Winchester, Cas can't stop remembering Dean, Castiel Character Study (Supernatural), Dean Winchester Character Study, Emotionally Repressed Dean Winchester, Episode Fix-It: s15e19 Inherit the Earth, Fix-It, Fix-It of Sorts, Jack helps, M/M, The Iliad References, and Dean can't stop thinking about Cas, nonbinary Castiel, post 15x18 rewrite
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-26
Updated: 2020-11-26
Packaged: 2021-03-10 07:28:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27719549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/extemporaneous/pseuds/extemporaneous
Summary: i have three (or four) acts planned, but this is a backburner fic that originally started out as a character exploration.i've got some other projects to work on first, especially since this one is not really anything special in lieu of the slew of post finale fix it fics.for now, please enjoy this cas 15x18 exploration.playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/15fBlYwJQml6yeuQPUViSU
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 20
Kudos: 40





	the spear that pierced patroclus

Thousands of years ago, Castiel visited earth for the first time. The sound of cattle as they were driven through the city echoed between the mud and stone buildings which would someday crumble to dust. Something he’d never felt before: a vibrancy, a primal nature instilled in these humans, coursed through the land and air. His vessel’s feet were planted firmly to the earth as people brushed past him, lives insignificant, but their first fleeting touches against his skin still lasted a lifetime. 

It was so unlike heaven, it was alien, even though he had been created to watch, to guard and protect. The humans of the small city laughed and smiled, nestled at the very edge of the cradle of civilization . He had never heard human laughter before. Was there joy in the dirt, in the blood shed and mortal coil? From where he stood in the cosmos between the garrisons and the solemnity of a race built for war, it was hard to imagine anything else. The humans _glowed_ with life, their souls were so bright it blinded him as he watched from miles away, somewhere high up that they couldn’t touch, even as he stood amongst them. 

He watched over the ancient city that would be dismantled by famine in only a matter of months, by God’s will. It was then that a first, diminutive seed of doubt planted itself in a dark place in his mind. 

***

_“You have been given your task. Now go. Serve us well, Castiel.”_

Hell was unlike earth, unlike heaven. Where his kingdom was sterile and pure, and earth was heavy and heaving, hell was suffocating… malevolent. He could not fathom what a soul had to do to serve there, for the rest of damnable eternity, just that it was possible: in fact, it happened so often that hell had been growing below for eons. A place to put all the irredeemable, filthy souls that wronged his Father. He knew his brother was here, somewhere. Lucifer himself: the first abomination. He reigned in the coldest circle of hell. That was not where Castiel was going.

Sparks flurried around him, catching and singeing the feathers of his ink-black wings. Hellfire stung, but he did not flinch— if he misstepped here, everything he’d ever worked for would be gone. Castiel could not fathom what this human had done to earn the rack. He didn’t know why he was in charge of saving him, just that the order came from Father. This was Castiel’s moment to prove himself to the others. He would serve. He would become exalted in their eyes. 

Castiel found him in one of the darkest corners of hell, where it felt like light was swallowed up and extinguished by the evil around it. Demons surrounded the human, their faces shifting with the light of the flames, flickering twisted expressions— rage, sorrow, fear. Things he did not know. The human hung at the rack by his wrists and neck, the iron had dug into his skin so viciously it bled. His head had fallen, limp to one side. Dark blood stained his face, smeared over his eyes and nose and lips, there was an ache that would never heal building itself in his bones. He knew the descriptions of human heroes well, but he had never seen one for himself until now. If Achilles were reborn, this was him.

From where Cas watched, poised to swoop down, he could see the shimmer of what had been his soul. It was so small, fragile… stuttering in and out. It’s radiance caused Cas to falter. There was nothing filthy about it. For a moment, it went out completely. Cas held his breath, baited. The demons cackled and howled in delight, and Castiel thought it as good a moment as any to rescue Dean Winchester from hell. 

The moment his palm sealed against Dean's shoulder— closed the final distance between him and humanity— Castiel’s mouth fell agape. Dean was _molten_ , his soul _burned_. Cinders collapsing and lighting again. The touch stole the breath straight from his lungs. It was like he held his hand over a flame, felt the flesh burning off, but couldn't pull away. He never would.

The simple nature of the grave was strange to Castiel. There was no monument for God’s chosen hero. Dean’s supposed final resting place was in a small clearing of trees, in the middle of an expansive nowhere. The marker was a small wooden cross, handmade in grief. Castiel placed him gently into his grave where he had been buried by his brother four months prior. The second his soul seeped back into the body, it began to regenerate. The earthy rot melted away to reveal a human face once again, the lacerations from the hellhound tearing him to shreds in his last moment sealed themselves as though they had never been there. Then the nightmares started: fresh from hell, and the first gasps of air in new lungs as Dean Winchester was once again on Earth. He wanted to ease them.

Castiel turned and ran, as far as he could. 

That was to be the end of his role in the cosmic game. Uriel took Castiel’s armor from him, cleaned it with Holy Water and instructed him to wait for further orders. 

“If there are any.” Uriel was gone in the blink of an eye— off to higher levels to converse with seraphs of the garrison, leaving the angel alone in the blinding light of heaven, which hurt his eyes in a way it never had before. Castiel’s palm burned.

***

If he was honest, he wasn’t sure he had a mind. For eons he had been empty, and surely there was no way things with minds could feel that way. Nothingness had dug a hole and grown somewhere inside. 

As clear as the sight of the galaxy from Heaven, a graveled voice prayed his name.

 _Castiel_.

Dean Winchester was calling out to him. He wasn’t sure if he had a mind, and _yet,_ he could make it up anyways. Heaven and hell were not done with him just yet. 

***

Dean was heavy...heaving...just like earth. The perfect, intoxicating embodiment of God’s favorites. The blade buried deep into his vessel’s ribcage, and Dean’s clenched fist slid past the handle of it, pressing against his chest. The naivety of humans. Castiel smiled. There was purpose in Dean Winchester, and that was what he sought. His brothers _would_ love him for this. 

But they never did. Castiel was quick to realize it. They were enamored with Dean, and his brother Sam. These Winchesters were the toys, and Castiel was naught but the one who had brought them to the table to play with. In Heaven they spoke of the seals. Sixty-six of them. Cas wondered what could ever go so wrong that they failed to stop sixty six attempts at releasing Lucifer. He said so. 

Anna looked at him with pity. “Dean Winchester broke the first seal, Castiel. A righteous man shed blood in hell. And now he will help us stop it. There are forces at play that you do not yet understand. But you will.” 

Anna soon disappeared, betrayed heaven. Castiel remembered a moment before she fell. She had been standing still and quiet and he had nearly walked past her. She stared down at earth, and her voice had been so soft he barely heard it, still wasn’t sure if it was something he had been meant to hear. “What must it be like? To be human.” 

Castiel was left with more questions than answers.

***

The longer he stood at the Winchesters’ side, the stranger and stranger he felt. He was as alien to them as they were to him. Everytime he spoke with the brothers it was like he took one step forward and three back to meet in the middle. To them, he was just another hunt waiting to happen, another monster under the bed. They just didn’t know what kind yet. Castiel didn’t know what he could do to guard them, what he could do to prevent the seals from being broken without a foundation of trust. Every command from heaven that he followed seemed to irritate both of the brothers. Castiel felt like he was grasping at straws. 

He had wishfully thought showing Dean his mother again would help, but the weight of the truth about his younger brother overshadowed everything. Lucifer cast long shadows over the hope he tried to build. Humans were so reckless, their own emotional wreckage was innate. His days filled with danger and threat, and yet there was something that kept him close. 

The moon was low, shining silver light into the diner. In a rare event, Dean was alone. He understood now that there was never just one Winchester— the other was sure to follow. It was like they were joined at the hip. Dean sat at a table, nursing a beer against his lips, staring at nothing but the checkered wall of the diner. The diner was otherwise empty. 

The angel fluttered down into the chair. “Hello, Dean.”

The man jerked upright, bringing the bottle in his hand down to the table so hard it broke. A stray piece of glass sliced into his palm and he winced, before his attention snapped to Castiel, eyes narrowed. He was upset. “Jesus, _Cas_. You ever heard of a friggin’ door? Does everything you do have to be Jet Blue? Y’can’t walk in like a normal person?”

Cas tilted his head, unsure of what Dean was talking about, but Dean had already turned his attention back to his hand, which he held up to his mouth, trying to clean away the blood. It caught on his lips, shone ruby red in the moonlight. Reaching out, Castiel took his hand, ignoring the concerned look on the Winchester’s face, and pressed two fingers near the cut. It glowed white, and then it was gone. “I’m sorry.”

Dean pulled his hand back. “What are you doing here?” Cas felt it was less of a question and more of an accusation. “Do I have any privacy left, or do you feathered dicks have my location at all times?”

“We always know where you are.” Cas grumbled, and he realized he wasn’t sure what he was doing in a diner, in what was now early morning of the next day, sitting beside Dean Winchester. “I was just checking in… making sure you still have faith in the plan.”

Dean looked away, blood still on his lip. He swallowed, knee bouncing. “Yeah. I don’t trust you as far as I can throw you, but I don’t want Lucifer walking above ground, either. So the plan is still on.”

Cas nodded, and then he was gone as quick as he came. 

When Sam, the blasphemous one, looked at him, it was like he was looking through him. Cas began to see through his own facade too: felt sheer, paper thin. Sam knew, somehow, that Cas was built with glass, easy to shatter. Castiel remembered coming across Sam Winchester's prayers once before. Most humans felt familiar, like they were pages in a book he had read once. He had a brief glimpse at their lives, before they faded from memory. Sam had been praying for a different life, many years ago, when he had still thought about going to college. Sam unnerved him. He was a human tainted by demons, and Azazel had built him for something. He just had to figure out what, before Sam did. 

***

Dean looked at Cas like he was a fortress, and… well, it sunk under his skin. He was magnetic. Made Castiel realize he was still an angel standing in a hotel room with a man who had been touched by hell. The angel saw it in his eyes, just behind the sincerity was something deeply broken. Dean prayed a _lot_ , though Castiel began to believe he didn’t even know he was doing it. Castiel didn’t mean to listen, but when he was one hotel room away, it was impossible to silence the quiet, terrified pleads pouring from Dean’s head right into his own.

At first he was ashamed, at times vitriolically, of the growing need to listen. Ashamed of a growing tug and pull. It was like Dean had built walls, but somehow, somewhere in the shit show of heaven and hell, Cas (omnipresent warrior of heaven that he was) had become stuck inside of them, only to find another wall when he tried to go further in. He was stuck on earth, driven by duty and trapped with a self-loathing sinner who would sacrifice near anything for others. The winchesters sowed chaos, it was how they fought the fabric of God. 

And if Cas was caught in the crossfire, if he put himself there, there was no one to stop him. 

One night, in Sioux Falls, while Dean slept on the couch, peaceful for just a moment, Cas found a worn copy of the Iliad sitting on Bobby’s shelf. And what he read scared him. It was about himself. Humans were presumptuous, but he found that they were often right about many things. He closed his eyes where he stood still in the dusty library, and felt the spear pierce through him where he stood in place of Achilles. Where Patroclus had stood. When he opened his eyes again, Dean was watching him through half lidded eyes. The heaviness of earth gathered between them. Cas held his breath, unable to tear his own gaze away. He waited for Dean to speak, but finally Dean blinked, turning on his side to get some rest before the end. 

Morning came and went, and then another. He watched Dean closely. Sometimes Dean knew he was there, other times Cas assumed the role that Dean had wanted since the beginning. A guardian. Dean was his to ward and protect. Heaven would be lost without him, Earth would burn and the soil would sour if Lucifer ever got his hands around his neck. So, most days he watched him from behind the wall Dean had built, and Castiel suspected he had even laid a few of the bricks himself. 

The presence of the wall became a reassuring constant. It meant he had not strayed so far from heaven he couldn’t find his way back. Castiel had found his purpose where it wasn’t supposed to be, by Dean’s side. But even after Uriel’s betrayal, a part of him wanted nothing more than to return to his garrison and hide. To go back to what was safe and familiar. He didn’t know that when the other angels saw them, came to stop them, that the light of Dean’s soul had begun to blend with his own, where they frayed. Castiel didn’t realize he was slipping down a steep hill he would never climb back up. He spent his time nurturing that original seed of doubt until it bore fruit. 

One night, when he stood alone along a roadside after a night of gentle rain, wishing that the cars that sped by had the power to take his life like he was human, the gentle sound of wings fluttering closed startled him from his thoughts. 

“It won’t ever be enough, Castiel.” Uriel said. Cas opened his mouth to speak but Uriel continued. “You were built with a chasm. You were _built_ incomplete. That’s God’s will. Not mine, not heaven’s, not hell’s. That nothingness you feel will only grow. You’ll realize that before the end.” 

Uriel was gone now, for years, but his words still rung in his head. It was true. Cas martyred himself, over and over again. The farther he drifted from heaven the more it hurt. He carved into his chest with a knife until the white of his shirt was soaked red. _His_ chest. No longer was he an angel in a vessel. He was this human for Dean, graceless. A familiar face. A face that made Dean look away. He sliced his arms, took beatings, traversed godliness, stepped through fire and bore storms for nothing but a stray glance. Millions of years and his whole life had happened in the blink of an eye.

Castiel laughed, and it strangled itself in his throat, coming out as nothing more than a sob. Now here he was, finally, at the end of all things good and bad. The empty. That forsaken nothingness he’d been running from all those years swallowed him whole afterall. True happiness. And it hadn’t been enough. The lightness he’d felt was swift, like a terrible weight had been lifted on his chest where it had sat. All the years, the burden of yearning with such force it knocked the breath out of his lungs. He couldn’t memorize Dean’s face one last time before it took him.

Now, he was supposed to sleep, but he couldn’t be more awake. He sat surrounded by the dark, trying to recreate that feeling of the first time Dean had touched him. The knife buried in his chest, human body heat more intimate and close than he’d ever anticipated. The spear that felled him. 

God was in humans. Chuck was just a vessel for the stories they told. If anyone could kill him, it was the humans he loved, the one he’d sold his soul to. A thousand glances washed over him, and it was enough to create the heaviness of earth that had poisoned him so long ago and float it in the empty. Dean was a juggernaut, and all his anchors were gone now. _Achilles come down from the edge_. 

_ Can you hear me? _

The empty cradled him, a phantom hand— Dean’s— caressed his cheek, lulling him.

<Aren't you tired, little one?> The empty asked.

"Yes," He breathed. 

A Dean, not his own, sung softly, sweetly. 

<Then sleep, now.>


End file.
